Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!ddsw1!karl From: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: No more Cinemaware stuff for Amiga !!!???? Summary: Amiga piracy is rampant; astonishment Message-ID: <1989Jul24.163632.23920@ddsw1.MCS.COM> Date: 24 Jul 89 16:36:32 GMT References: <268@nrcvax.NRC.COM> <30140@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <4929@alvin.mcnc.org> Reply-To: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) Organization: Macro Computer Solutions, Inc., Mundelein, IL Lines: 65 In article <4929@alvin.mcnc.org> raw@mcnc.org.UUCP (Russell Williams) writes: >In article <30140@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> mitchell@janus.UUCP (Evan Mitchell) writes: >>In article <268@nrcvax.NRC.COM> mikey@nrc.com (Mikey Goodglick) writes: >>>Bad news people.... Cinemaware may be getting out of producing software >>>for the Amiga. WHY??? TOO much piracy. I have this on VERY good authority. >>>The only way that this can be changed is for YOU to buy thier stuff...rather >>>than copying it. It is up to us. I for one would like to see Cinemaware >>>keeping up the good work on the Amiga. >>>PIRACY DOES HURT US ALL! > > You know, I've been hearing people complain about piracy on the Amiga >for a long time now, but it's strange that they make it sound Amiga specific. >Now, I'm sure that the owners of different machines exhibit different >tendencies as a group, but who is Cinemaware going to make their games for? Perhaps they won't make them at all. Perhaps they are tired of producing a game, seeing 50,000 copies out there, and only getting paid for 5,000. Let me tell you all a little story.... I was at a SF convention a couple of months ago. They had a "computer room", as some of them do. Inside were three or four Amigas. Also inside were some THOUSAND 3.5" diskettes, with every program ever conceived for the Amiga on them. And among them was not ONE original disk. NOT ONE. Every game, every application; they were all there. Star Wars. F18 Interceptor. Hacker. Strip Poker. Deluxe Paint II. Etc. All there. Every one loaded with a "cracked by byte bandit" or somesuch hi-res screen instead of the normal boot loader -- then the game would load normally. EVERY SINGLE ONE. EACH ONE was copyable, and the people in the room didn't seem to care much what you did with the disks (ie: if you had a few blanks you could have taken nearly everything you wanted). I was NOT impressed. People, if you want something that costs money, for cripes sakes BUY it. Don't steal it. What I saw could have easily amounted to grand theft many times over - there had to be $50,000 in pirated software there. That is $50,000 that software authors and publishers DIDN'T receive, but should have. After seeing this I decided then and there that my company would never produce an Amiga product. I've never seen something like this in the MSDOS or Unix world. Piracy, yes. Piracy on this kind of scale -- people writing boot loaders to specifically crack protection?! This was my first experience, and I was horrified. We'll stay with Unix products, even though we could write some really killer packages for the Amy. If we're only going to get paid for one out of every 20 copies, it's not worth the hassle. Wise up people. If you pirate enough the people who make the products you are _stealing_ will stop producing software, you'll have nothing to use, and the hardware companies will go out of business too (since without software a computer is useless!) -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, !ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 312 566-8911], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"